Ink-jet recording is carried out in such a manner that minute ink droplets are allowed to jet utilizing various working principles, and to allow said ink droplets to adhere onto a recording material so that images as well as text are recorded. Ink-jet recording exhibits advantages of relatively high speed, low noise, and ease of multicolor printing.
Further, being based on the recent technical progress, pigment ink, comprising pigments, which exhibit excellent lightfastness, a colorant, has received increasing attention as ink for application requiring images with excellent lightfastness.
Pigments are not soluble in solvents. As a result, pigments are dispersed into solvents and are employed in ink in the form of a dispersed state. Therefore, even when the molecules on the surface of dispersed pigment particles results in photochemical decomposition, any new pigment molecular layer under the decomposed layer is exposed. As a result, a decrease in apparent density is minimized. Therefore, said pigment ink is characterized in that excellent image retention properties are achieved.
However, said pigment ink has caused problems in that after image fixing, it is difficult to create high gloss images due to effects of scattered light, as well as reflected light caused by said pigment particles.
Still further, Japanese Patent Publication Open to Public Inspection No. 5-265337 discloses that in a fixing belt comprising a base material having on its surface a releasing layer, said belt is characterized in that said releasing layer is comprised of a silicone resin. However, a silicone resin layer is directly coated on the base material and the formed layer is not strongly adhered to the base.
Japanese Patent Publication Open to Public Inspection No. 2000-112271 discloses a fixing belt having a releasing layer comprising a hardenable modified silicone resin on the outermost surface (which corresponds to a releasing layer) of the support material.
However, there was such a problem, in which a fixing part material became an elastic body and smoothness of a recorded material was reduced even provided with a rigid silicone resin as the outermost layer, because an elastic layer was provided between a surface layer and a base material. Further, although there is a description with respect to an adhesive layer, it does not contribute to improve adhesion of a surface layer because of the constitution in which the adhesive layer is provided between an elastic layer and a base material.
According to Japanese Patent Publication Open to Public Inspection No. 2001-222176, adhesion strength was improved by utilizing a metal alkoxide in an adhesive layer of a fixing belt for electrophotography, however, there was such a problem in which releasing property was insufficient as a fixing part material for ink jet recording images because a metal alkoxide had been added also in a releasing layer of the fixing belt. Further, there was such a problem, particularly in case of fixing an ink jet recording material, in which ink jet ink solvents permeated into the adhesive layer resulting in marked reduction of adhesion strength.
There may occur problems in which swelling rate of the layer changes depending on the used and unused portions of a fixing belt or a fixing roller resulting in that that gloss is exhibited differently between the repeatedly used portion and the unused portion; concretely, there caused problems in which gloss varies in an identical image when a large size image is fixed after a photographic size image has been repeatedly fixed, and glossiness changes from the beginning to the latter resulting in insufficient consistency of quality.